Free Mama Cracks a Mask of Innocence by Nora Deloach

into her now emptied plate. “No use getting it, Annie Mae. You ain’t about to put flour, eggs, sugar, and butter together like Candi!”
    Mama smiled, flattered by compliments of her cooking. Then she glanced up at the clock. “I really have to get supper started for James,” she said to the women.
    “When are you going to come to the center to get those clothes separated so we can help Ray deliver them?” Carrie snapped, remembering why she had come to our house.
    “Tomorrow morning,” Mama answered. “First thing tomorrow morning.”
    Mama had good intentions, but sometimes unanticipated things can come upon you so quickly that they can change the best of plans. What happened to my mother and me a few hours after dinner was just such an unnerving event.

CHAPTER
NINE
    A fter our visitors had departed, Agatha came out of her room. “Old man Elliott Woods stopped by not too long ago,” she told us as she entered. “He left a mess of okra, said he was sure you would’ve wanted him to. I thought you’d want them cooked for supper so I washed them, cut them up, and put them in the refrigerator.”
    “You sit down,” Mama insisted, cleaning off the table. “You’re not well yet.”
    Agatha obeyed, pulled a chair from the kitchen table and sat down. “Elliott is a talker, isn’t he?” she told us.
    “Elliott does have the gift of gab.”
    “He liked to talk my head off, going on about the women who buy his vegetables because they are so good. You’d think he was trying to get me to be one of his customers.”
    Mama laughed. “I suppose he was prospecting, seeing as you don’t buy his vegetables.”
    Agatha didn’t say anything.
    “I was thinking about cooking some new potatoes and roast chicken,” Mama told her. “You think that will suit you, Agatha?”
    Agatha smiled and nodded.
    “It’ll suit me,” I cut in, as I thought of the succulence of Mama’s roast chicken. “I don’t remember Elliott bringing fresh vegetables before this.” The truth was that I knew very little about this vegetable man.
    “Elliott is an old-timer,” Agatha told me, her voice slightly breathy, soft. “His daddy and my daddy used to share farmworkers together to harvest their watermelon crops.”
    “Sarah, Carrie, and Annie Mae told me,” Mama added, “that Elliott used to run a big, productive farm.”
    “That was years ago,” Agatha told us. “Besides, the big farmers with company backing are the only ones that make money today in farming.”
    “Well, according to Sarah, Elliott wouldn’t give up digging in the soil. He plants a very productive garden.”
    “Not that good,” Agatha muttered.
    Mama smiled. “He used to sell his vegetables directly to the Winn-Dixie. Then he had some kind of run-in with the manager. So he decided to take his wares directly to the customers, to women like me who buy fresh vegetables several times a week.”
    “If all the women who buy Elliott’s vegetablesbuy as many as Mama does,” I said, “Elliott has a very good business.”
    Agatha coughed. “I don’t buy his stuff—I’ve got my own garden.”
    I couldn’t help but think that it was in her garden that she’d had the heart attack, and I opened my big mouth and said, “It might be a good idea for you to cut back on planting a garden.”
    In one split second Mama and Agatha exchanged looks, and I could see that I’d said the wrong thing. After a few seconds of awkward silence, Agatha yawned.
    “I’d better go back to bed,” she finally said, standing. “Doctor said I needed lots of rest.”
    Once she was back in her room, Mama whispered, “Agatha is clearly not interested in talking about cutting back on anything she does, Simone. But it’s clear that the day is fast approaching when she’ll have to cut back on some things if she plans to continue to live alone.”
    “I won’t be the one to talk to her about rethinking anything,” I told her.
    Mama’s eyebrows rose, but she didn’t respond. She